A Cup of Rage - Tapa blanda

A savagely short novel of immeasurable ambition and violent beauty. This is the language of genius.--Juan Pablo Villalobos

From the first page, which opens in media res, it is apparent why Nassar has achieved such renown in his homeland, despite only publishing two novels before retreating from public life: his prose moves with a violence, vitality, and sexual energy that burns like a splash of acid.--Ciat Conlin

Born in Brazil in 1935 and from a Lebanese family, Nassar has been quietly raising livestock since 1985, a fact reflected in the settings of these two masterly novels, just translated into English. He's also a leading world writer, offering emotionally wrought scenes in vivid, liquid language, and his discovery will gratify anyone interested in fine literature.--Barbara Hoffert

The book contains much: rich inner monologue, political allusions, and a mesmerizing pull between dominance and insolence in lovers' quarrels.--Sara Wilson

Both books remain hot, dense and coarse, full of raw feeling and mental friction. Grainy as dust, dark as dirt. Nassar delivers his portraits of human fallibility and fragility masterfully.

Nassar...pitches into his sentences spanning whole chapters constructions so breathless that it's impossible not to dash through them. But the end of one only activates our craving for the next. This is downhill prose, not for savoring but for devouring.--Becca Rothfeld

How often, honestly, does the unveiling in translation of a "forgotten genius" live up to the hype? Well, here's one who does: the Brazilian Raduan Nassar.--Lorna Scott Fox"Putting in the boot" (04/20/2016)

[W]ith two short books that together amounted to fewer than three hundred pages, he was already being hailed as one of Brazil's greatest writers, mentioned in the same breath as Clarice Lispector and João Guimarães Rosa.--Alejandro Chacoff

A Cup of Rage is a burning coal of a work, superbly translated by Stefan Tobler.

A pair of lovers—a young female journalist and an older man who owns an isolated farm in Brazil—spend the night together. The next day they proceed to destroy each other. Amid vitriolic insults and scorching cruelty, their sexual adventure turns into a savage power game between two warring egos. This intense, erotic masterpiece—written by one of Brazil’s most highly regarded modernists—explores alienation, arrogance, machismo meltdown, the desire to dominate, and the wish to be dominated.